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Audition: A Memoir
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MSRP: $29.95
Your Price: $19.77
Savings: $ 10.18 ( 34% )
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Manufacturer: Knopf
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Additional Audition: A Memoir Information
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Young people starting out in television sometimes say to me: “I want to be you.” My stock reply is always: “Then you have to take the whole package.”
And now, at last, the most important woman in the history of television journalism gives us that “whole package,” in her inspiring and riveting memoir. After more than forty years of interviewing heads of state, world leaders, movie stars, criminals, murderers, inspirational figures, and celebrities of all kinds, Barbara Walters has turned her gift for examination onto herself to reveal the forces that shaped her extraordinary life.
Barbara Walters’s perception of the world was formed at a very early age. Her father, Lou Walters, was the owner and creative mind behind the legendary Latin Quarter nightclub, and it was his risk-taking lifestyle that gave Barbara her first taste of glamour. It also made her aware of the ups and downs, the insecurities, and even the tragedies that can occur when someone is willing to take great risks, for Lou Walters didn’t just make several fortunes—he also lost them. Barbara learned early about the damage that such an existence can do to relationships—between husband and wife as well as between parent and child. Through her roller-coaster ride of a childhood, Barbara had a close companion, her mentally challenged sister, Jackie. True, Jackie taught her younger sister much about patience and compassion, but Barbara also writes honestly about the resentment she often felt having a sister who was so “different” and the guilt that still haunts her.
All of this—the financial responsibility for her family, the fear, the love—played a large part in the choices she made as she grew up: the friendships she developed, the relationships she had, the marriages she tried to make work. Ultimately, thanks to her drive, combined with a decent amount of luck, she began a career in television. And what a career it has been! Against great odds, Barbara has made it to the top of a male-dominated industry. She was the first woman cohost of the Today show, the first female network news coanchor, the host and producer of countless top-rated Specials, the star of 20/20, and the creator and cohost of The View. She has not just interviewed the world’s most fascinating figures, she has become a part of their world. These are just a few of the names that play a key role in Barbara’s life, career, and book: Yasir Arafat, Warren Beatty, Menachem Begin, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Roy Cohn, the Dalai Lama, Princess Diana, Katharine Hepburn, King Hussein, Angelina Jolie, Henry Kissinger, Monica Lewinsky, Richard Nixon, Rosie O’Donnell, Christopher Reeve, Anwar Sadat, John Wayne . . . the list goes on and on.
Barbara Walters has spent a lifetime auditioning: for her bosses at the TV networks, for millions of viewers, for the most famous people in the world, and even for her own daughter, with whom she has had a difficult but ultimately quite wonderful and moving relationship. This book, in some ways, is her final audition, as she fully opens up both her private and public lives. In doing so, she has given us a story that is heartbreaking and honest, surprising and fun, sometimes startling, and always fascinating.
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What Customers Say About Audition: A Memoir:
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Well written book Arrived in perfect condition. Interesting history about t.v. networks,bruised egos and world events.
For the most part, I enjoyed reading this book, however, it goes on a bit too long. It was detailed and I realize Walters is a journalist and details are her game, but I could have edited it down at least one hundred pages. Her life was quite interesting and overall she gives good information but not enough on the personal side. I think that historically it is a valuable story because Walters was a pioneer for women in the media in many ways.
There are so much to say about this book, and I suspect many other reviewers have said much of it. An admirable book by an admirable person. I do not applaud her willingness to speak with each and every dictator and tyrant , if it will be a good interview.
And much much else. This book tells a lot about the American media world, and American history in the time of her life.While the book is a good interesting and entertaining read throughout I found that the story of her early years was particularly moving for me. I would only say that I came away from the book with a tremendous respect for Barbara Walters, her honesty her courage, her remarkable energy, her loyalty to her parents and sister, her devotion to her daughter, her wisdom in dealing with life's difficulties, her hanging in there in tough situations and knowing how to make the best of them.
But overall it is impossible not to have great admiration for her great capacity to care about , and help a wide audience know about all kinds of interesting, and often remarkable people. I do have reservations about the book and about some of the things she does. I do not believe she tells the 'whole truth' about her marriages.
She brings back memories of many lost things, and illustrates again and again how things once cared for as important fall in time to being completely forgotten.
I learnedthat she lived a nomadic childhood, often moving because her fatherLou Walters would be involved in various nightclub ventures throughoutthe country.She then became perhaps the most successful female newscasterof all time, largely because she had to stand up to such counterpartsas Frank McGee and then Harry Reasoner. thoughaudiences found it "hysterically funny," she at first found the spoof"extremely upsetting" . I've long admired Barbara Walters as a television journalist. rather, it's almost as if you're sittingdown with her over coffee and watching the TV show she now co-hosts,THE VIEW.I particularly liked her advice about the right ways and the wrongways to ask touchy questions. I will miss her. it wasn't easy at times;however, she persevered and eventually won the prestigious LifetimeAchievement Award from the National Academy of Television Artsand Science.There are a lot of details about her encounters with such celebrities as Judy Garland, Golda Meir, Richard Nixon, Fidel Castro. How do you respond to that."In addition, I got a kick out of reading about her reaction to Gilda Radner'scaricature of her as "Baba Wawa" on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE.
Walterslater met Gilda Radner and told her she thought the caricaturewas funny, and when Radner died of ovarian cancer, Walters senta simple note to her husband, Gene Wilder. however,until I heard AUDITION, her autobiography that she both wrote andread, I knew little about her.This was a most enjoyable book that I'd recommend to anybody interested in finding about more about what makes Walters tick. only when her daughter told her to"lighten up" did she realize she was losing all perspective. but to Walters'credit, none of it feels gossipy. When dealing with a heinous killer, for instances, Walters advises against asking, "How could you be such a monster." Far better to do it this way: "There are people who thinkyou are a monster. it read: "She mademe laugh. Baba Wawa."
A fun book to listen to--the audio book is read well. The author writes well of her struggle for success, its costs. She seems unaware of the overall portrait she paints of herself--as if her self-justifications and rationalizations could gloss over the moral reality of her life. Well, maybe it works for her.
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